The Monkey King watched indifferently and didn't seem to care at all about Kairos' actions or his words. He stretched out his back a bit and then looked toward Sylas who still hadn't moved a single inch.

There was a calm cadence to Sylas' breath right now, a sort of calm that came from a man who was endlessly self confident in himself.

"You aren't going to repeat his actions? You're okay with building your foundation on the back of someone else?" The Monkey King asked with a sneer.

"Have I?" Sylas asked.

He didn't clarify, he didn't go into detail, he didn't even bother to explain himself. He didn't have to.

From the very beginning, his path had been his own. He didn't seek out the Virtue of Pride Seed, it came to him. He didn't seek out the Virtue of Lust Seed either, it came to him.

Did he build his foundation on the Monkey King? Or did the Monkey King's failure force his legacy to pick him in the end?

And even then, if the Monkey King hoped to use that to his advantage—.

"Is that so?" The Monkey King raised a hand and then snapped his clawed finger to his thumb. Skin rubbed against skin, a flint being lit between his sharpened nails. However… Nothing at all happened.

Sylas just stood there, indifferent and uncaring. There wasn't a single inch of himself that even budged, and he didn't seem to be struggling against anything either.

He was simply unblemished.

The Monkey King's eyes slowly narrowed. "… Hohoho… I see…"

Sylas hadn't tapped into Arcane Madness at all. Whatever attempt the Monkey King made to control that, it failed on its face.

Sylas' Pride was so perfect and so true that it would have been even more accurate to say that he and the Monkey King had stumbled upon a similar mechanism to utilize their Pride rather than to say that somehow Sylas built his foundation upon that of the Monkey King.

In Sylas' opinion, no one's representation of Pride was better than his own. He stood above the Monkey King, and he had proven that over and over again.

To think that he would need to rely on a wellspring of Pride from the world itself to strengthen himself…

He already had more Pride on his own than he knew what to do with. What the hell would he need more for?

"I can see why you're so confident. You've always been an arrogant piece of shit."

"And you seem to have lost your edge." Sylas said just as indifferently.

He could tell why Kairos had left. The latter was disappointed when he understood the last piece of what was going on.

Sylas had already understood from the very beginning, but that was because his vantage point was different, and he knew exactly what had led up to this matter.

That was why he had reacted the way he had, it was why he had chosen to rip it out of himself. But Sylas had a feeling that if Kairos had built his Pride Seed from his own well of Pride instead of Arcane Madness, he wouldn't have bothered to rip it out either. His reaction would have been much the same as Sylas' own.

But sometimes that was the problem with having guidance. Kairos had his own thoughts, but he was still somewhat tied down by the views of others.

Sylas progressed slower without guidance, but his way of viewing the world was also more flexible.

However, as the two of them grew stronger, it could be said that each one would become more like the other.

Kairos would grow more flexible and start breaking away more and more from the teachings that had raised him up.

While in comparison, Sylas would learn more about the world and give his wild ideas more form and more structure just like he had his Spacetime Rune Path.

In the end, the universe was likely quite interested in seeing who would end up being the stronger between the two.

But both of them felt like they already knew the answer, and both of them likewise felt the very same indifference toward the Monkey King now.

The difference was that Kairos didn't know what had made the Monkey King change, but Sylas knew exactly what had done it.

It was impossible for a man's Pride to be so thoroughly crushed and yet come out unscathed. In some way, it would change. You would either become completely different, or you would double down.

The Monkey King's Pride had perpetually been in sharp opposition to Sylas' own. Sylas refused to ever take a step back, but the Monkey King was fine with doing so as long as he won out eventually. That was what differentiated them.

So what happened when a Monkey King who already had a flexible Pride was suddenly faced with the decision to either lay it down forever or double down?

Well, he doubled down.

And when you doubled down with such a flexible Pride, what you got in the end was someone who was utterly shameless and willing to do everything and anything for victory.

Even if that meant building up a Split Realm, forging the Golden Battlefield, and creating and raising up races of Demi-Gods and bringing down races of Gods themselves all to form a trap for a single person.

A person who had humiliated him so thoroughly in both the future and the past, and was attempting to do so even in the present.

That was right.

The reason Sylas had grinned like he had was because he realized that the Golden Battlefield he had been "benefitting" so much from, the Mutated Dungeon he had been trying so hard to comprehend and learn from… Had always been a trap.

Everything was laid out over millions, tens of millions, maybe even billions of years for a single purpose.

Revenge.

Sylas' future self had humiliated, tormented, and eventually ripped the Monkey King of everything he was worth.

So the Monkey King doubled down. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

And he would kill Sylas in his cradle.

The world rumbled and one figure after another began to appear, lining the skies with armies of gold.

A wild grin spread across Sylas' face, his veneer of indifference finally shattering in an aura so volatile he gazed like a blazing sun.